Category: memories

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Tuesday’s sun beats in the dawn with a hot flash at 5:37. We rise, another day older, deeper in debt. Well, some. Your condition may vary.

So has begun 6/29/2021, much like other days have begun. Let’s talk about the weather. Discuss world affairs. Lament politics. Recall game delights and heartbreaks. Let’s huddle by Zooms and perch in cubes, hunker in offices, rush to flights, beat the traffic, and drink to that. Let’s pursue the dream like smoke in a valley. Train for the impossible. Gird ourselves for the effort. Drink the Kool-aid and move on.

Sunset should bring its mercy at 8:51 PM. Temperatures today are lower. Some claim we will break triple digits. Others say, no that barrier is safe. Yesterday’s scorcher saw 113 to 118 around here. Then, strange salvation from a wildfire down south, the Lava Fire by Weed in California. Smoke drove in along I-5, cutting the solar influence, giving us an early respite. Flipside, air quality went from good and clear to moderate, start watching out.

I’ve been awakening with the melodic strains of Kansas, “Dust in the Wind”, occupying my brain’s whorls. Wonder each day, are dreams calling it out, conscious thoughts inviting the song to the party, something wired in my brain, or just serendipity? Maybe when I die, I’ll go to this great exchange, the Afterlife Market, where all your life mysteries can be seen and explained. You can know just what happened when that girl ignored you, you didn’t get that promotion, a cousin disappeared one quiet night after a party, or why Mom went mad. The truth is in there. You can learn everything you want at the Afterlife Market.

As with other mornings, “Dust in the Wind” gives way to other tunes. An old favorite has hurried in. I played it once before as my theme music. Think I’ll do it again today. Remember, stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, can the vax when you can. Thanks.

Here’s Molly Hatchet with their 1979 offering, “Flirtin’ with Disaster”.

We’re flirtin’ with disaster, ya’ll know what I mean
And the way we run our lives it makes no sense to me
I don’t know about yourself or what you want to be, yeah
When we gamble with our time we choose our destiny

h/t to Genius.com

Cheers

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Memory Fuel

Heat fed memories click on. Summertime in Pittsburgh, PA. The Good Humor truck. A race to get money for ice cream. The weight of decisions. Buying for little sisters.

Outside all day. Popping bubbles that rise in the asphalt. Riding bikes. Pedaling as fast as childishly possible to get the wind running your hair back. Playing with Matchbox cars in someone’s shady side yard. Trekking to the creek. Attempting to construct dams. Baseball, softball. Sometimes swimming at a public pool. Chlorine up your nostrils. Red eyes and wrinkled fingers. Walking around. Sweating. Fanning ourselves. Seeking Popsicles. Grinning as we drip with watermelon juice running down our chins. Sunscreen? Suntan lotion was used — at the beach or pool. Never anywhere else.

But…don’t ever recall a hundred degree heat. When ninety was encountered, oh my gosh, is it hot. I’m melting. Ninety now…give me ninety all day. We’re talking 113. 118. Sitting inside by the ‘puter. Or reading. Watching the cats melt.

Same planet. Different world.

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Monday’s Theme Music

The annual rewind has begun. Not what’s happening, of course. More about revolutions and rotations. The essence, though, is that our daylight hours are beginning their seasonal wane.

Today is Monday, June 28, 2021. Sol’s golden beating began at 5:36 AM, a minute later than yesterday. By 7:45, the thermometer was climbing past 86 degrees F. We expected 110 in our southern Oregon valley today. We’ll get some relief tonight, after the sun moves on at 8:51 PM. The temperatures are expected to drop to 66 then.

I was in a work groove yesterday. Finished wall number three. On to number four this week, completing the great room saga, I mean, painting. Then it’ll be…other rooms.

While painting, I was writing in my head, going through plot lines and character arcs, imagining new scenes, re-thinking old ones, working my way toward a better ending. With this going on — writing in my head and painting the great room (and dealing with the heat) (yeah, okay, I turned on the A/C) — a song from 1970 entered the mental musical rotation stream. By King George, the song is called “Groove Me”. It’s a nice taste of R&B. I enjoyed the backstory of how this song came to be. King George worked in a factory a few feet from a young woman. They saw each other every day, but he was too shy to say anything. He finally wrote this song as a poem to give her. But he never saw her again.

Stay positive, test neggy, wear a mask when needed, and get the vax. Thanks. Here’s the music.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Thursday, June 24, 2021, found the sun’s first fiery fingers combing through the valley at 5:36 AM, silencing the night life, stirring the more noisy, numerous day life. With more thunderstorms yesterday and some meager sprinkles, temperatures fell again. Sol is expected to lift the temperatures back into the low to mid-nineties in our region. Right now, it’s 78 F and mildly humid. Sunset is expected at 8:51 PM.

We have a vacation planned for next month. Our vacations generally rank well with us in experience, and hold up well with memory. Most memorable are the ones that go wrong. Like, for instance, that time that we were living on Okinawa. We took space available seats — Space A is the lingo — on a military aircraft to Hawaii. Had a wonderful time. Space A took us south to Guam on a C141. Dark as hell in there. Seats bolted to the floor, facing cargo pallets and an engine. Box lunches — chicken, sandwiches, candy bars — sustained us. We landed at Midway. The base commander opened the small exchange and showed us around.

Meanwhile, a typhoon (as we called them then — this was in 1983) was churning around the Pacific. We made it to Clark AB in the Philippines (now gone) only to be hurried north. We were trying for our home base of Kadena on Okinawa, but the typhoon’s plans interfered. We ended up in Yokota Air Base, Japan, where the typhoon hunted us down, forcing us to shelter in place. Finally, the storm reversed direction and swung south, freeing us to head home, ending a ten day adventure. Not quite National Lampoon’s Vacation, but a lot of fun. And memorable.

So today’s music is “Vacation” by the Go-Go’s (1982). Test negative, stay positive, wear a mask, and get the vax. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

An afternoon of thunderstorms was Tuesday’s highlight. Rain fell sometimes. With all the thunder, you wonder, where is the lightning striking in this dry land? What part of the tinder is meeting its match? But it brought temperatures down into the eighties, though with a muggy overlay. Overnights fell even lower, forcing us to close windows against getting too cold. Aren’t we precious?

Hi. Today is Wednesday, June 23, 2021. Our ol’ friend Sol entered our valley like a child sneaking in past curfew, arriving at 5:35 AM (again – been several days of 5:35 AM sunrises). The child will sneak back out at 8:51 PM.

All that thunder and questions about lightning caused Eddie Floyd’s song, “Knock on Wood” (1966), to knock on my thoughts. Its fat sound spoke to my mood. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, get the vax, and enjoy the day. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

The slide began on a Tuesday, June 22, 2021. Sunrise at 5:35 AM was one minute later than the previous day. This depressed Michael. He could see the tunnel forming that would lead inexorably to the coldest, shortest day, which meant the longest, darkest night.

Brewing coffee, he shook it off. Summer was here! At 9:00 AM, the local temperature was 78 degrees F. Thunderstorms and clouds offered some refuge from the heat. They’d only be 94 today before the Earth’s turn shifted them from the sun at 8:51 PM. The thunderstorms might bring wildfires, though. Fingers crossed…

He began humming “More Human Than Human”. Humming it until he began singing, soto vocce, “Yeah. Yeah.” The White Zombie song came out decades before. When? Yes, back when he retired from the military in 1995. He’d been amused hearing it. The song title is lifted from one of his favorite movies, “Blade Runner”, based on a favorite book, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” He often thought of that slogan while slogging through corporate meetings in subsequent years. The start ups. Then Tyco. ISS. IBM. “More Human Than Human” encapsulated the misleading slant corporations bring to their marketing.

It was a depressing way to begin the day. Brewing more coffee, he turned to writing. Even if not a successful writing day (which was always iffy), writing was a distraction, his personal drug.

“Be positive,” he told himself. Test negative, his mind answered. Wear a mask when needed. Already got the vax. The state — his adopted state, Oregon — was almost at seventy percent.

Fingers crossed. It was becoming his personal slogan.

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Monday Messes

  1. Well, the stories circulating the net about me are true: I changed my underwear. Like many, I started as a tighty whitey in the sixties. Bikini briefs burst on the scene and I went over to those in my early twenties. Eventually, I found my way to boxers in my late twenties, and rested on that preference for several decades. In fact, I’d not bought underwear since the end of the last century. My boxer collection fit. They worked. They were wearing thin, become more like see through lingerie. I reacted, whatever. Mom used to warn me about having clean underwear without holes in them when I was a youth, in the event of an accident. We’ve all heard about that trope, haven’t we? I was rebelling agin’ it. If people could wear jeans with holes cut in them as a fashion statement, I could wear underwear with holes in them.
  2. The new undies are boxer briefs. They have a little sack for my sack. It’s a sack sack. They’re also made of stretchy cotton. They cradle my butt and hold it up. Sexy, yes? Well, we’ll see about that, but they are comfy. Now I must go out with the old.
  3. Thinking with out with the old, I looked up something on the net yesterday. Algorithms behind searches and advertising thought that I should be reminded that Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones starred in The Fugtitive in 1993. That’s a good marker for change. I was in the military at what became my final duty assignment at Onizuka in California. A few families decided to go to the ‘Drive-in Movies’ because the last one in the San Jose-Mountain View-Santa Clara-etc. area was closing in a few weeks. We bought pizzas and watched The Fugitive. It was my final drive-in movie experience.
  4. I loved going to the drive-in movies with my family as a child. Mom did it right. Made fudge. A big roaster of salted, buttered popcorn. Iced lemonade to drink. We took pillows and blankets. Arriving early for a good spot was a must. That meant getting there before dusks. The movies began at dusk. To kill the time until then, we spent time on a playground up in the front by the big screen. Then darkness fell. The speaker was attached to the window. Commercials played. Cartoons followed. Then the movies.
  5. Although, one year, at the drive-in, I was on the see-saw (or teeter totter) as a young one (five?). Dad was supervising us. He was holding me up while helping my sister off on the other end. I decided to get off. Just as the see-saw came down. Landed on my ankles. Didn’t break them but did serious damage. I was restricted to bed rest for weeks.
  6. Painting yesterday required me to empty the home entertainment center. To move it and paint the wall behind it. Although infrequently used, I’m loaded with CD. Hundreds. The CD player has space for 200. Bought that thing waaayyy back in Germany in 1990. Amazing it still works as designed. My wife wondered if I could part with some CDs. I declined. I’m saving them for the apocalypse. I’ll crank up a generator and my music. Meanwhile, I was listening to classic rock through Alexa as I painted, because the stereo was dismantled to move the entertainment center.
  7. The bee tree is humming today! Don’t know what kind of tree it is but it’s tall and fragrant. Bees love it. Early last week, I walked past it. Hearing silence, seeing no bees brought on a touch of weary depression. Then, two days later, I noticed bees had arrived and were singing as they worked. Today they had a huge chorus going. I can sit in the office and watch them flying to and from the tree and around the branches. Go, bees!
  8. We’ve been trying (again) to simplify. (I know, I should start with the CDs (or old underwear), but I’m not.) We usually buy used books and then sell them to book stores. If we can’t do that, we give them to Goodwill and/or swap them at tiny libraries. But circumstances (COVID-19) has prevented us from selling or donating books. We have boxes and books full of hardbacks, trade backs, paperbacks. Seeking a new way, we looked at selling them back to book stores online. We’re fans of Powell’s City of Books, so we started with them. Twenty books were selected that met their condition guidelines. I put the ISBNs in; eleven books were selected. We printed out the UPS label. Packed up the box. Took it to UPS. Powell’s received it the next day. That was over two weeks ago. Silence since then. We’re disappointed. We’re talking about trying other places.
  9. It’s wildfire season again here in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. Heat is rising, the drought is spreading and deepening. Vegetation is going brown. Ashand Firewise Program urges homeowners, land owners, and businesses to clean up their area. It’s an ‘or-else’ situation. They will fine you. Cut your weeds and grass to less than four inches because otherwise, it’s fire fuel. Clean up your dead leaves, or it’s fire fuel. Ditto, fallen branches. Yet, walking home along a main road in Ashland, the city’s property is covered with leaves and the debris that they urge us to clean up, or-else. Another case as do as I say, not as I do.
  10. I’ve made a resolution for 2022: don’t go to the emergency room. Been to the ER three years running. 2019 was for an enlarged prostate/blocked urethra. 2020 saw me break two bones in my left arm. 2021 had me in being treated for a kidney stone. That’s enough, okay?
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Monday’s Theme Music

76 degrees F at 8 AM. Will probably be a warm Monday.

June 21, 2021. This is it: our longest day. That’s the accepted norm. I like the long periods of daylight, so, sigh. Not looking forward to the shorter days of daylight. Sunshine initiated ‘the longest day’ with its faint streams at 5:35 AM. It’ll cease at 8:51 PM. Between those hours, high temperatures in the upper nineties will be enjoyed. It’s interesting that today’s sunrise is a minute later than the last two days, but sunset is later. Result of all these rotations, revolutions, and tilt in play, yeah? Fun to imagine us streaking through the solar system around Sol, along with our planet siblings, while the whole arrangements itself is whizzing through the galaxy and the galaxy is racing through the Universe.

“Summertime Blues” by Eddie Cochran occupies the AM mental music stream. The song was released when I was two but received a lot of airplay throughout my youth. Although the song is about the misery of a teenager with a summer job, I’ve always been enamored of that line, “There ain’t no cure for the summertime blues.” A gaggle of acts have covered the song, including The Who and Brian Seltzer, but I’m loyal to that original. It popped out of memory and into active thought as I finished painting yesterday and contemplated my next summer task. Wonder why. Heh.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Sunshine’s golden dew slide down the heavens and dripped over the treetops and roofs at 5:34 AM. The cats began singing, “Morning has Broken”. Or they may have been threatening one another about violating their neutral zones. Hard to say with cats.

We mark today as Saturday, June 19, 2021. It’s the first officially declared Juneteenth as a holiday in the U.S., a day to remember when slaves were finally given the news that they were freed. Blacks have been celebrating this day far more often, but many remained ignorant about it, or downplayed the significance. I hope its recognition grows and it doesn’t become diluted with sales, as it happens to so many U.S. holidays and observances.

The sun’s electric slide is expected to end at 8:50 PM in our valley. Temperatures will hunt the lower nineties before the Earth turns away from the sun.

I was thinking of “Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty last night (1978). I’d done a few miles of walking and was now massaging my toes. That brought on the song’s lyrics. “Light in your head and dead on your feet. Well, another crazy day. You’ll drink the night away, and forget about everything.” I won’t drink the night away. Probably will forget a few things. Mind like a sieve, this one.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax. Here’s the music. Cheers

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